China

Against overwhelming odds, the efforts of countries and donors to pursue the Education for All (EFA) goals over the last decade have paid off. The number of out of school children has dropped by the tens of millions, enrollment rates have surged, first grade entry has jumped substantially, completion rates have shot up, gender disparities have diminished, and other types of equity have improved in many countries, including in very large countries like China, Brazil, Indonesia, and Ethiopia. Of course the six EFA goals and Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3 still remain to be achieved so we are anything but complacent. Nonetheless, we have seen substantial progress.

It is really important to recognize that in education we are talking about broad, system-wide outcomes – not just narrowly defined (albeit incredibly important) specific outcomes – for example in the health sector, improved outcomes on a few diseases. Scores of countries around the world have made great leaps forward on education results, despite poverty, despite the fact that many donors did not meet their funding targets, and despite the fact that EFA doesn't have a Bono, a Bill Gates, or an Angelina Jolie to promote its importance.

Blogging from the World Bank's Indigenous Peoples Research Dissemination Workshop in Washington DC.

As is well known, there are more 300 million indigenous peoples in the world. While they make up fewer than 5 percent of the global population they account for about 10 percent of the world’s poor. Next year, Cambridge University Press will publish my book with Gillette Hall on the state of the world’s indigenous peoples.

As part of the dissemination process, we have brought together most of the contributors to our volume for a workshop in Washington D.C. today, to share their research with each other and with an audience of World Bank staff, researchers and others from the development community. We expect a lively discussion on our forthcoming publication, which covers countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Blogging from the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York City.

As world leaders gathered this week at the UN for the MDG Summit, the World Bank called critical attention to the state of indigenous peoples throughout the world - who show higher poverty rates and lower schooling rates than their peers - with a session that reviewed key findings from a new global study.

There are approximately 300 million indigenous peoples in the world. They make up fewer than 5 percent of the global population, but account for about 10 percent of the poor. Nearly 80 percent of indigenous peoples in the world live in Asia. Indigenous groups in China and India alone account for more than two-thirds of the world’s indigenous population.